<p>Right now, I'm a junior in high school. My currently gpa is 3.8 UW and 4.5 W. However, my school tends to have slackers, and we don't have class ranks according to anything except our GPA, so I'm at the 80% and 69th in the class. (Most 4.0's take ALL easy classes). I've literally taken every single honors/AP class available at my school, and I all my B's were in college courses. </p>
<p>(our school does this where you have 2 semester grades per year for each class)
B's: 1 in Ap US history, 1 in Ap language, 1 in college precalc, 2 in Honors Biology (no AP available at school), 1 in honors english 10 (no AP available) </p>
<p>The rest of my grades are ALL A's.</p>
<p>I have lots of extracurriculars and a 33 so far on my ACT (only took once). Im taking the SAT's and subject tests soon. </p>
<p>Just based on GPA, do you think I have a chance at schools such as Rice, U Chicago, Brown, and Yale?</p>
<p>Based on ONLY GPA probably not. BUT those schools (and most in general) look at the class rigor and how the rankings are made. Those schools will realize that your rank is based on UW GPA and you took the hardest curriculum. They will evaluate it in that light.</p>
<p>I don’t know, I’d probably make a comment in the Additional Remarks section that your Weighted GPA would likely be in the top 5%, but is a method of ranking not calculated by your school.</p>
<p>As to your chances, absolutely. An unweighted 3.8 in rigorous courses is probably right in the middle of the enrolled student GPA at Rice, Chicago and Brown, and probably just 0.1 below Yale.</p>
<p>At that point, your file will look like this:</p>
<ul>
<li>ACT: check</li>
<li>Transcript: check</li>
<li>Recommendations: ??</li>
<li>Extra Curriculars: ??</li>
<li>Will applicant add to the vitality of the campus: ??</li>
</ul>
<p>My school doesn’t do class rank either, but it’s ridiculously competitive so I’m pretty glad about that. I think they do rough percentages and I’d have to have a 3.9 unweighted to be top twenty percent. </p>
<p>I’m in the same boat as you are where I decided to go for APs at the cost of my gpa going down a bit.</p>
<p>That’s why a lot of colleges care more about your GPA and rigor of courses than your ranking. My brother’s ranking in school was in like the 20s, but he took a cubic buttload of AP courses which he obviously got a good enough grade on to be accepted in to Columbia Engineering. I don’t know what his GPA was, but his percentage was 106% weighted, 94% unweighted.</p>
<p>If you think about it, you can be like the valedictorian of your high school in like Hawaii, but still only have a 3.0 GPA. No offense to Hawaiians if there are any here (I love your pizza).</p>
<p>I’d say you have a good chance. But then again, that’s just me.</p>
<p>This doesn’t make any sense at all…? Why would a valedictorian in Hawaii have a low GPA?</p>
<p>Besides, most colleges care far more about rank than about GPA. The exception is if your rank is based on unweighted GPA, though, because it doesn’t take into account the rigor of your courses. </p>
<p>Your GPA is good enough for these schools. Typically, your rank wouldn’t be good enough, but given the ranking system, it’ll be fine (your counselor will denote that ranking is based on unweighted GPA in the counselor report).</p>
<p>I hate that some schools rank based on GPA rather than WGPA. Unfair to kids like you who take hard classes. Oh well.</p>
<p>LOL. CalvinTOB, you obviously don’t know much about Hawaii or about how a valedictorian earns the honor of being a valedictorian. This is a good argument for geographic diversity at university campuses.</p>